


The Reality of Waking

by Chancy_Lurking



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Families of Choice, Hallucinations, Happy Ending, Magical Realism, Multi, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 04:58:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10236404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chancy_Lurking/pseuds/Chancy_Lurking
Summary: "Sherlock means to stand, but he feels like he’s outside himself, like he exists just slightly above his own body. He looks down and the floor is mud, then cobble stone, then it’s the roof he jumped from, then it’s the carpet in the Watson’s apartment."(Sherlock gets trapped in a drug-induced fantasy that is scarily close to his real life.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [destinationtoast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinationtoast/gifts).



> Fandom Tr*mps Hate piece for destinationtoast!!!

It isn’t that Sherlock doesn’t realize something has gone wrong, because he does. The change is not exactly what one would call subtle.

Time has twisted itself into a knot and, it appears, Sherlock is stuck in the center, tilted off his normal plane of existence. He feels fascination more than panic, however, and believes he can pick out the beginning of the string, because he has his hand on it when he first feels himself shift.

The knocker on the door of Siobhan Fischer’s apartment.

Siobhan is the estranged wife of the primary suspect—or, well, _Sherlock’s_ primary suspect in his latest case. It’s a new case, John not having even given it a proper name for the public to refer to it by, but it stands firm in Sherlock’s mind. He is now certain that, not only did Mr. Fischer kidnap these women, but also that his wife is somehow involved. That doesn’t quite explain the _knocker_ though.

It’s a loop of shined brass made to look like ornate rope, a cut-rate approximation of something expensive that seemed fitting to the cost of living in the neighborhood. It doesn’t stand out until he grabs it and his hand comes away slick; something too viscous to be water but not thick enough as a likely bodily fluid. By the time he brings his hand to his face to smell it, a mere second or less, he feels prickling throughout his arm and he is sweating profusely. He wipes his hand on his coat, stepping back from the door.

 A poison? No, no, there would be too high of a chance someone else might knock and keel over on the patio. A missing mailman would be noticed quicker than a missing detective prone to disappearing for hours at a time. It wouldn’t be a poison. The sensation _is_ a bit like a high, in the way that standing in a hurricane is a bit like a shower. As he found himself hyper-salivating and dizzy, he concludes he’s been drugged.

Not with a drug he’s ever experienced before, though, which is saying something. He tries to move back down the steps to the sidewalk, confused to find himself backing into a wrought iron railing that definitely does not match the metal he’d seen upon walking up. He looks down at where his hand has gripped the metal on reflex and tries to focus enough to get his fingers to uncurl. It happens with flashes of colors he’s never seen before and he watches in wonder as the metal warps to his hand, pulling away with him as he moves it back.

“ _John_ ,” he says groggily, patting himself down with his free hand to find his phone. He gets it out of his pocket, but finds the screen too bright to look at, wincing as the light sears his eyes. Pressing the screen, he tries to type out something, tries to press send, but the phone is lifting out of his hands or—no…

He’s falling and the phone is staying in place above him, he watches as if flickers between painfully bright and complete darkness, before a sound obscures his vision – _a voice_.

It catches him before he hits the ground, gripping him hard by his arms, feels like it pierces _through_ his arms but he can’t look down and see it, he doesn’t feel like he can move his eyes at all.

“You look unwell,” the voice says and its whispering is too bright; he shuts his eyes and tries to shout. “They’ve made you so unwell, Sherlock.”

Sherlock hardly registers the sensation of something pricking the backs of both his hands before he’s laid flat out. It’s cement under his back, he knows— _does he?_ —but it feels softer, it moves him. The voice speaking to him in between the flashes of overhead lights.

“ _You’re going to have to save yourself, now,_ ” it does not say, but he understands the colors in it’s tone, can grasp the meaning. Its will drips like a faucet into his ears, and he listens even as he feels his mind going watery, nondescript, “ _Free yourself for me. Free us._ ”

Sherlock can’t hear himself, but he thinks he says, “ _Who are you_?” just before he realizes he’s staring up into his own face, but younger, _so_ much younger. A striped shirt and an eye patch, the bank of a river, but his hair is too long – dangling down like drapes on either side of his face – and he has more shadows than could belong to one person stretching out around him. They blink at themselves as they reach through their own chest, screaming.

“ _Remember._ ”

Time is still in a knot when Sherlock wakes with a start on the couch.

“Ah, there he is!” Mrs. Hudson exclaims, putting down a tray in front of John. “Just in time for tea.”

John had already been half turned towards him, but now sits up, looking him over carefully. “How are you feeling?” he asks.

Sherlock doesn’t respond, watching them both with narrowed eyes.

The thing about having a nearly eidetic memory is that everything he sees makes sense in the context of everything he knows – which, is frankly, an impossibility. Nothing in reality matches up so closely to his idea of it, down to the nicks and tears exactly. It’s wrong, it’s _fake_.

Because _yes,_ John bought Mrs. Hudson those earrings last Christmas, but that violet is too close to exactly what it _should’ve_ been in Sherlock’s mind, they were never _actually_ that clear. And Mary tossed out that _horrid_ jumper John was wearing ages ago, yet here he is wearing it again when he most certainly didn’t go dumpster diving for a sweater with _blood stains_ —

“Where’s Mary?” Sherlock asks.

_Who’s Mary?_

Sherlock knows John says this, but then the world seems to blink and shake itself when he does, as if confused, rattling Sherlock’s perception with it. He grips the couch to right himself, but everything is wrong again, worse than before. The wrong bullet holes in the wall, the nail polish Mrs. Hudson swore off two years ago, there’s a pram just beside the door, far too old to belong to Rosie. Sherlock means to stand, but he feels like he’s outside himself, like he exists just slightly above his own body. He looks down and the floor is mud, then cobble stone, then it’s the roof he jumped from, then it’s the carpet in the Watson’s apartment.

The world gives a gasping shudder again and it’s all _wrong_.

Mrs. Hudson’s earrings are back to that dull purple they should be and John is in the jumper Molly purchased for his birthday – still ugly, but a vast improvement.

“What about Mary?” John is saying, but when Sherlock just stares at him, he stands, brow dipping. “Sherlock?”

“What happened?” Sherlock utters slowly, feeling as if though everything just outside his vision is folding itself into the proper shapes he expects, how _brilliantly_ disorienting.

John hesitates, then claps his hands together with a sigh. “You were right,” he says, “Mrs. Fischer figured out you were onto her and tried to, ah, ‘persuade’ you she was innocent. Dosed you with something called Lorem Ipsum.”

“Right,” Sherlock says carefully, eyes narrowed. The things he had experienced were not the symptoms of Lorem Ipsum by a long shot. “Makes one susceptible to suggestion,” he continues, then sits up, looking at his hand, which is largely unchanged, before looking at John. “Did it work?”

John huffs a laugh. “Right up until you got here,” he says with a half-smile. “I asked you what the emergency was and you remembered straight away. You were all set to go chase her down. You don’t remember any of this?”

“No,” Sherlock says, trying to imagine a good reason why that wouldn’t be in this farce. “Did we catch her?”

“Greg had it handled,” John replies. “You must’ve still been feeling the drugs, because I asked you to wash your hands and lay down and you did it without arguing.”

Sherlock graces him with dry humor. “How terrifying,” he smirks when John laughs.

“I have half a mind to ask for some for myself, if it’ll get you to listen so easily!” Mrs. Hudson exclaims, sitting down beside him, and patting his arm.

“How did you know there was an emergency?” Sherlock asks, watching Mrs. Hudson’s hand on his shirt.

John narrows his eyes at him. “You texted me or—well, sort of.”

Sherlock reaches out his hand. “Let me see it.”

John huffs but retrieves his phone off the table, placing it in Sherlock’s hand.

A suspicion is confirmed when he stares down at the message boxes on John’s screen, filled with symbols that aren’t letters in any language _he’s_ ever seen. “I can’t read,” he concludes with wonder.

“What?” Mrs. Hudson says as John’s face falls.

Sherlock turns the phone around to John. “This message, it doesn’t say anything.”

John looks properly concerned now. “It says ‘ _vatic’_ , Sherlock, I could guess what it meant.”

“I _know_ what it says,” Sherlock snaps, looking back down at the phone. He scrolls through the rest of John’s messages, knowing what each one says, even though the text is unintelligible, as though in a dream. “That’s not the same as reading it.”

“Isn’t it?” John asks incredulously.

Mrs. Hudson turns to the table and picks up a newspaper, “What’s this say, then?”

“No, I know what it _says_ ,” Sherlock insists standing up and looking at all the papers spread over the table. He doesn’t _remember_ them exactly, but staring at the symbols, even with no apparent pattern he can put together the meaning behind them. “But I’m not _reading_ it, I just know _._ ”

“Perhaps you ought to lay back down for a bit, dear,” Mrs. Hudson says fretfully. “I’ll wake you up for dinner.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “I don’t need—” he cuts off abruptly when John grabs him by the chin, shining a light in his eyes. He submits himself for no more reason than John’s fingers on his skin, though he makes a show of sighing. “I didn’t hit my head.”

“What’s happened to his head?” Mary’s voice is suddenly there. “We need that.”

Though he hadn’t heard the door open, _knows_ she hadn’t been in the flat, all the same, there she is when he turns to look. Out of the corner of his eye, she had looked pregnant, but when he faces her, Rosie is on her hip, flushed and with a finger jammed in her mouth.

“Nothing’s happened,” Sherlock says, properly intrigued.

“He was drugged and he’s going to sleep it off,” John corrects, steering him back down towards the couch.

“Perfect,” Mary exclaims as she comes over – her hair long and then not – and lays Rosie on Sherlock’s chest. “She needs a nap about now, too.”

Sherlock means to sit up and hand Rosie back, but he suddenly can’t move. Rosie is too heavy on his chest, much too heavy for a child of her size, but for some reason it doesn’t frighten him. He’s still breathing, watching her rise and fall with his breath. Why is she so heavy?

Why is Sherlock sinking into the couch?

“ _Perfect!_ ” Mary’s voice rings again and Sherlock blinks at the sound of her voice from the wrong side of the room where she’s handing Rosie to John. Mary becomes the weight on his chest, laying down and tucking her head under his chin. “ _I need a nap about now, too,_ ” she says.

“Mary…” Sherlock wheezes, tries to warn her, but his arms are closing around her.

“Ah, that’s good, then,” John says and sounds slow and so very far away. “ _I think Mrs. Hudson and I can manage for an hour or so._ ”

Mrs. Hudson replies and John answers her and Rosie babbles at them, but Sherlock cannot be exactly sure what is said. It sounds like hearing music from under water; he feels like he’s submerging, Mary floating down softly with him.

She snuggles closer into his arms and her warmth makes his eyes heavy. She pats his chest as she settles in and sinks with him. “ _It’ll all be fine when you wake up_ ,” she says clear as a whistle, but Sherlock isn’t sure it’s her voice.

In fact, he’s certain it’s not.

This pattern repeats itself, Sherlock reacting differently each time it does. He tries responding to them with anger, with patience, with the truth, with humor, by leaving the flat, by going to sleep alone, and under Rosie, under Mary, under John, with his head in Mrs. Hudson’s lap. None of it changes the wrongness of the room, mostly due to the fact that every time it gets closer to accurate. The couch feels right under his body and the walls are standing at the correct height, as are the decorations on them. When people speak to him, he does not question that their voices belong to them. By the fifty-sixth time, this knot of time is as straightened out as it’s going to get.

He’s laying down for the fifty-seventh not-sleep, absently stroking Rosie’s hair, until he blinks and he’s running. There is the tightness of adrenaline in his stomach as he sprints down the street with John on his heels. Mary’s speaks directly into his ear, “ _You’ll want to take a left when you pass that cab._ ”

“Right!” John says and Sherlock knows he’s got a gun in his belt, they’re chasing something—someone _perfect_ ; he doesn’t know who it is, what they did, but he can feel it in the base of his skull. There were murderers, there was someone missing, they were going to catch them all, _the game was on!_ This is one of— _all_ of the best cases they’ve ever—

“ _It’s a bit like a videogame, you know,_ ” Mary says absently, “ _Watching you boys run around, telling you where the cops and bad guys are._ ”

“Yes, which by the way, you’re doing how?” John asks breathlessly.

Sherlock can hear her smile and matches it when she says, “ _Sherlock got me a toy._ ”

Would he? He supposes he would, tries to make a note to do so as he throws himself around the corner and ducks behind a bin.

“What sort of toy?” John pants, leaning against the wall.

Sherlock knows the answer, because it’s right even if it’s not true. “GPS tracking rig set up in conjunction with a police scanner. It uses local phone towers to triangulate certain phone numbers. That’s why I had Peters call you for a consult.”

“That’s illegal!”

“ _Oh, John_ ,” Mary laughs, “ _Only if we get caught._ ”

Sherlock laughs, though the sound turns into something else he doesn’t care to name.

“Only if we get caught,” Mary says again, only this time teasingly and not through an earpiece. Her smile is pressed to his ear, her hands are warm on his neck and he permits her touch. It is warm and kind and turns his heart in his chest in just the right way, almost as much as John’s gaze boring into his from where he stands in front of them.

Mary’s hands slide from his neck to his chest and her hair tickles his cheek as she laughs. “Our little monster has been acting up again,” she whispers.

“Rosie was perfectly pleasant today,” Sherlock says dumbly, as if reading from a script – hasn’t said anything _dumbly_ since he was an infant, _if_ then. Focusing on her touch is taking too much of his brain power away.

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” John says and his voice has taken that tone he uses when he’s trying to impress women, but he’s talking to _Sherlock,_ has yet to look away. He’s stepping closer. “She was talking about you.”

Sherlock tries to breathe slowly, finds it hard, finds _himself—_

“What did I do?” he asks.

“Why would you be afraid?” John says and he’s standing in Sherlock’s space, Sherlock can feel his breath.

Sherlock has the vague feeling he’s asking himself.

He turns his head and sees himself, seated on the couch, watching the Watsons – all three, happy and smiling and perfect – on their way out the door—without him? No, because John looks confused and Mary looks at him like he’s foolish and says, “ _Are you coming or not?_ ” The relief from that moment is still there, though he stands pressed between Mary and John now, Rosie is… somewhere safe. He watches himself leave before he looks down in John’s eyes, feeling lost and nearly scared. He hates it, he never wants to feel like this again. He thinks, somewhere deep down, he feels like this all the time.

“I thought…” Sherlock begins. _I thought you’d go on without me._ He can’t make himself say it, the words feel needy and _sentimental_ and he will not let them escape the confines of his own inanity.

John looks thoughtful, though, like he knows what went unsaid. “Why are we here, Sherlock?” he asks and shifts so his body is pressed to Sherlock’s, takes his hands. “You’re the genius, why would we welcome you in like this?”

Sherlock shuts his eyes, because the answer is there, floating above him in this fake space. John is possessive of himself as Mary’s lover, would never willingly casually share the title with another person. John is possessive of himself as Sherlock’s partner, would never have stayed with Mary has Sherlock not survived her, not opened to her. Mary knows this and loves John more than she has possibly loved anyone else. Sherlock is John’s and John is Mary’s, so of course Sherlock is hers too; she took a chance on him, she smiles at him with her whole face and means it. She scolds them both and held their hands through Rosie’s birth – _one on either side, the middle._ They all care for Rosie too much to introduce a stranger to their… _them_. Sherlock is the only other piece to this puzzle, the third and final solution.

Sherlock is their missing piece, but he does not want to be missing anymore.

It has to be a lie, an answer fabricated by this _ridiculous_ knot of time, but – _oh!_ the fact that he wants it to be true. Mary is soft behind him and John is hard in front of him and he _wants_ – heaven help him, for once, he _wants_ this thing of bodies and feelings and the softly spoken words they breed.

“Show him,” Mary murmurs and Sherlock opens his eyes, letting out a shuddering breath when she kisses the side of his neck, he wants to disappear into her arms, into John’s eyes. “Show him.”

John’s lips on his feel like they’re melting into his, like they might be sharing one pair.

It’s wrong and he knows it is, but he falls with them, falls into them and lets them catch him. It’s wrong but it’s perfect, it’s everything as it should be.

Even after, when he is too warm between them, but won’t move from where John’s breathing is stirring his hair and Mary his raking her nails up and down his side, because this is where he belongs. In between running and chases and cases and gunshots and solutions, he belongs with the— _his_ Watsons.

“I don’t want to leave,” Sherlock whispers against Mary’s breasts, hiding his face there and hoping to hide the words with them. Mary hums and hugs him tighter and he presses his palm flat against her spine.

John kisses the top of his head and twines their legs together. “Then don’t, love.”

_Love._

Sherlock feels his mind settle in a way that almost never happens.

Is it love? It has to be, but he can’t be sure, but this is _his_ dream and he loves them, he loves them so much he could just drown in them. To do this to him, _surely_ they too must love—

“Why are you entertaining this fantasy?” Mycroft’s voice breaks in and everything twists.

Sherlock looks up from where he is watching Rosie attempt to recreate the crayon human heart he’d drawn for her.

He… he _knows_ he drew it, but is suddenly cold, missing his space in bed. The baby had woken him – _from the first time or the time Mary had left him scratched or the time John laughed in his sleep or the time they all slept on the couch watching ‘educational’ cartoons_ – except now Rosie is less of a baby. She’s sitting up on her own, looking down with concentration as she scribbles on Sherlock’s drawing, happy as can be. The implication of passing time in this relationship, of his part in it, makes him happy as well.

 Mycroft looks cross. “You know this isn’t real, Sherlock. It can’t last.”

Sherlock hadn’t heard him come in, which most likely means he hadn’t _actually_ come in, another instillation in this ridiculous capgras experiment. His tie flickers until it’s the correct shade, his belt seems to not exist until it pinches at his gut the right way. A new construct that doesn’t quite exist correctly in Sherlock’s mind yet.

He turns his attention back to Rosie, who is easier to look at, and only partly because she has already settled in this delusion, fluctuating age aside. “Yes, well, I can’t exactly get out.”

“You haven’t even tried!” Mycroft accuses, “You’re _wallowing_ here!”

“Don’t be stupid,” Sherlock says. He doesn’t believe in magic, but science he trusts implicitly. The science required to create an illusion of this nature to such an extent on an unwilling – or nonconsenting, at least – participant should largely be hypothetical. There are very few people in the world who could pull this off, but he is possibly the best test subject. He _knows_ it is fake, but still can’t pull himself up. A lesser man, might not even know it was an illusion to begin with. “I’m analyzing.”

Mycroft just scoffs. “What?” he exclaims, “The whims of your baser desires?”

Sherlock goes flush, gritting his teeth. He is stopped from shouting only by the knowledge that it would likely cause Rosie to cry, begins to think this setup was intentional on the part of his subconscious. “There’s a reason I’m here, some _meaning_ behind it,” he hisses quickly, “I just don’t know what it is yet.”

That just earns him a disgusted curling of Mycroft’s lips. “How incredibly _pious_ of you,” he sneers.

Sherlock opens his mouth to retort, but then Mary’s voice drifts in from behind him. “ _You there, love?_ ”

“Yes, Mary,” Sherlock says, quickly picking up Rosie and turning on his heel.

Something like the sensation of a breeze hits him, seeming to pass _through_ his pores and settle in his bones when he turns. It seems as if he should feel cold, but instead he just feels what normal people must experience as dread. He doesn’t have to look back to know Mycroft is gone with the wind, but the sensation of Rosie leaving his arms as if she’d never been there gives him pause.

There’s the temptation to call out – to Mary or John or Rosie, he isn’t sure which – but he quickly smothers it, feeling the prickling of a presence at his back. The room is still empty when he turns to check, so he goes over to the window to find Baker Street is… _displaced_.

It’s as if it was meant to be gone completely, but Sherlock has integrated it so seamlessly as a part of his mind that he can’t stop seeing it. It’s there, even as he looks at the impossibility of a river in it’s place, a river he remembers intimately. John and Mary are ankle deep in the waters of his childhood, Rosie held up by her hands between them, bouncing and shrieking excitedly.

Sherlock watches for a moment, frowning.

It’s no odder than anything else that has happened to him in this tiny infinity, but for some reason it feels heavier. He heads to the stairs, feeling as though this is an answer to something he hadn’t thought to ask. When he opens the door and sees the geography has changed, a graveyard and a little child suddenly between Sherlock and the riverbed, he _knows_ it is.

Knowing better than to try and pass her by, he sits down beside her among the headstones as she watches the Watsons play. When she turns to look at him, he feels an odd mix of unease and the undeniable urge to smile at her. She has his dark mess of curls and ice-bright eyes and for a heart-tripping moment, in the context of this fantasy, he almost believes she could be his—

“What is the difference,” she says slowly before his mind can drag him through the completion of that thought, “between love and drugs?”

Sherlock’s confused smile dims to nothing. “What?”

“What is the difference between love and drugs?” she repeats, “Between a self-induced delusion and an administered one?”

“Drugs are intentional,” Sherlock answers, eyes narrowed.

“And love is not?” the girl replies. “Would you stay here intentionally if you could?”

The short answer is no and he says as much.

It’s lovely here, it really is. Mrs. Hudson’s hands will never shake here and Mycroft will always leave when Sherlock wants. Rosie is always smiling and happy in his arms and John and Mary kiss him and make love to him here, it’s wonderful. And though Sherlock warms under their love and mostly undivided attention, he does not flourish under it, he needs more. He needs to know what drug he was given, he needs to know by whom and for what purpose. He needs to harass Anderson and Sally and forget Lestrade’s first name. He needs the horridly domestic Christmas dinners at his parents and he needs the flush on Molly’s face when he bothers her to play with bodies. He needs to _never_ leave John Watson again and he needs to protect Mary and Rosie, not his mind’s closest imitation of them. The ecstasy of chasing answers doesn’t mean anything when it’s fake, when there’s no real _chase_. The answers…

“You always have the ‘right’ answers, especially if you’re only answering your own questions,” the little girl says as if she’d heard the rest, too. She looks hopeful and mocking as she looks out at the Watsons, “You’re not one of them, Sherlock. You’ll just grow bored and break them.”

Sherlock blinks and her damp little fingers are twined into his, but it feels like his whole hand is surrounded. “I won’t.” He looks up at her, ignoring the possessive tightening in his chest, “Who are you?”

“You have to remember,” she whispers back with a smile, “I’ll keep you here until you’re bored to death of them, until you _hate_ them unless you remember. You have to remember _._ ” Her voice splits between a little girl and a woman and a screaming violin. There’s a dog barking and a child yelling for help pulling at his attention. “You’re staying here until you _free_ yourself, free _us_.”

The little hand in his suddenly feels like a syringe – _a knife, a gun, a bomb, all of them at once and worse, all of them his._ He tries to let go, because he will not _ever_ want that sort of freedom, wouldn’t even consider it _._

When Sherlock opens his mouth to respond, he is howling, but he doesn’t understand why at first, doesn’t register the pain.

Something is being ripped out of his hands, then his arms, then something pulling on his hair, water filling his mouth and nose. He tries to flail, but there are hands there, restraining him.

_You have to remember._

He’s heaved up by the shoulders and dragged away, too weak to fight as gravity swings wildly around him, unfamiliar smells and colors making him dizzy. Mary and John shout his name, Rosie is wailing. An unfamiliar boy cries for him and Sherlock deletes everything about him, everything that hurts, all of it, _gone._ An unfamiliar girl with blank, haunted eyes watches and whispers against his shoulder,

_He’s not the important one, none of your pets are. You have to remember._

_Free yourself. Free us._

There’s crashing doors and shouting, there’s streaky darkness and water burning his lungs. When the world lurches to one side, he coughs it up on the floor, someone pounding on his back as he does.

_You have to remember!!_

Sherlock blinks at his own sick on the floor, on someone’s shoes. When he tries to lift himself, he doesn’t make it far before his arms give and he lands face first on the rough fabric of someone’s lap. He groans, taking in a deep breath of a familiar scent.

When he tries to choke out John’s name, he just starts coughing.

“ _John_ ,” Mary says tensely and it takes a moment for Sherlock to understand the lurching he feels is her driving. He blinks his eyes clear to see her looking away from the road to glance at him and John in the back seat.

Sherlock smiles at her because why wouldn’t he.

She doesn’t smile back; something’s wrong. Her eyes have a sort of concerned mania to them, her hair twisting it’s way out of an old skull cap. There’s blood on her cheek.

“Sherlock,” John says and Sherlock cranes his neck to the side to look up at him. It’s wrong, John’s never looked this tired and gaunt, his eyes have never been so frightened in this dream. “I need you to stay awake.”

“I don’t think I sleep,” Sherlock croaks, though he does feel the pull of lethargy. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he’s actually slept, but all the same, this is the first time he’s been hit with any sort of fatigue and it’s the exhaustion of someone who’s gone nonstop through dozens of variants of the same happy days.

The Girl said he would stay here until he was sick of them, she didn’t say here would stay nice. Maybe it’s not meant to be a fantasy anymore, but John and Mary are here, so it’s… Alarm is slow to creep in, but when it does, he tries to sit up.

“Where’s Rosie? Who’s got Ro—?” John pushes him back down against the seat.

“Easy, Sherlock, she’s with Molly, she’s fine,” John assures him and Sherlock eases under the familiar pressure of his hands. “Just stay with us, we’ll take you to see her, ok? Just stay awake for me.”

Sherlock focuses on John’s face, then reaches up to touch it, confused by the roughness against his fingertips. “You’ve gone scruffy again.”

“Yes, yes, I have. I suppose you’ll tell me all about it now,” John’s face starts to blur, even as he pats Sherlock’s jaw, “No, no, Sherlock, tell me about— _Sherlock._ ”

Sherlock wakes in a hospital room that feels like it’s on a boat, the bed rocking side to side even as he lays still on it.

The doctors are clearly meant to be stroking his ego, having none of the answers he already has and he gets short with them rather quickly. This rescue is one of the more tedious illusions he’s been through yet, though it does give him an idea of the malleability of his circumstances. The happiness was too disingenuous, easily seen through. If the delusion is meant to be accepted as real, it must _too_ include the annoyances of the life Sherlock would choose for himself. Listening to doctors blather at him like he’s some sort of layman being one.

If this is his mind’s way of allowing him to figure out what’s happened to him, he’s dulling.

“It was meant to make me prone to suggestion,” Sherlock says, more interested in getting home quickly enough to make his _own_ slides of his blood. He doubts they’ll show much given the circumstances, but if he’s being shown this, he has to try. “Probably something reminiscent of Project Bluebird, something beyond your depth so spare me your—”

John grabs his hand before Sherlock can move to pull out his own IV.

“Inane dribbling, yes, yes,” the doctor finishes for him and Sherlock’s eyes narrow. “We’ve had this conversation before, but this time I’m actually prone to release you to the care of your… _‘primary physician’_.” The phrasing is sarcastic enough that Sherlock feels like his own words are being thrown back at him.

He turns to John on instinct only to find his face is drawn. “Sherlock, it’s been _days_ ,” he says tiredly. “The drug— _drugs_ have finally cleared out of your system, so it should be…”

“Oh, isn’t that convenient,” Sherlock sneers at the ceiling. “I suppose my urine has been used up as well.”

“Yes. Well. At least _this_ conversation is new,” the doctors sighs. “I’ll get your discharge papers.”

“Mary was right, wasn’t she?” John says when the door swings shut behind the doctor, and Sherlock looks over when John smirks. “She stole you some blood samples, don’t get in a state.”

Sherlock’s chest swells. They’re perfect, _god,_ they’re perfect.

For the next week or so, things are a new sort of brilliant.

Mrs. Hudson does an absurd amount of fussing over him and he’s tired enough to allow it. When he got to the flat, she was on him in an instant, a sharp slap on the arm and then her arms closed around him. He’s been gone for _weeks_ and she intends to fatten him up properly this time around so he doesn’t waste away if he gets taken again _but he better not get taken again_ , _you hear?_

When Mycroft comes in to tell him the same, Sherlock is quick to ask him about all sorts of British black-ops drug experiments he shouldn’t even know about that make him pale and uncomfortable enough to leave. He’s going to look into this, Sherlock knows, and he’ll be able to press him for intel once he has more.

Mary has been lingering about his side, only managing to stay out from underfoot with the grace of someone trained to kill people quietly. She holds Rosie on her hip and leans over him as he analyzes the blood and urine samples she stole. Their warmth is welcome against his shoulder as he strings together thought after endless thought about what _that_ molecule could possibly be and why it had lasted so long in his system and why they had him in a suspension chamber if he was numbed and anesthetized.

John is home from work for those first few days, at Sherlock’s dispense for talking at, but also to grab him by the shoulders and force him to dinner. He doesn’t realize that this is the only touch he’s received from the man as of late until later in the week when John leaves for work.

Sherlock is sitting with Rosie in his lap when John walks over to kiss Mary goodbye before leaning to kiss Rosie as well. Sherlock stops just short of embarrassingly leaning into a motion John was not trying to instigate as he nods at Sherlock and stands up right.

“Are you angry with me?” Sherlock asks, eyes narrowed in confused interest. John being cross with him on occasion _had_ been a part of their dynamic that had been missing in the fantasy, but he can’t think of anything he’s done recently that would upset him. If this is a glitch, he certainly doesn’t like it at all.

John, however, looks just as confused. “What? No, of course not,” he pauses where he was sliding on his coat. “Why? Did you do something wrong?”

_Something_ is wrong. The world is correcting itself in the wrong place, his mind—the mind of whoever drugged him is not so sloppy as to mistake John for a spiteful man. He wouldn’t punish Sherlock for no reason, something else must be happening.

Sherlock blinks in confusion, looking back down at Rosie who has not changed in age once in the last few days. Hasn’t changed at all beyond the little nick on her cheek where she accidentally scratched herself. So he doesn’t understand why he feels like he might fly away if not for her weight on his lap; he tries to focus on her. “No, no,” he answers John, bouncing Rosie just to give his body something to do as he thinks, “just checking.”

“Are you feeling ok?” John asks and comes back to his side, “You’re a bit pale.”

“Am I?” Sherlock mutters absently, touching his own face. He doesn’t realize his hand is shaking until his fingertips tremble against his skin. _Something is wrong._

It hits like a bus when he looks down at the coffee table, looks down at the papers _on_ the coffee table.

He can _read_ them.

They aren’t just covered in symbols that impart their meaning directly into his understanding, the words are clear on the page, he has to read them to know what they mean. He’s never been able to see the date before, but there it is, almost a month later than the day he went looking for Fischer. In the past week, he’s only looked at his own hand writing, never print, he never realized…

“This is real,” Sherlock says and looks around himself. The walls are perfect, the noise of the flat is normal and so is the smell. Nothing is shifting or adjusting, he stands up and goes to the window, aware of John standing close at his back.

“Sherlock,” he says anxiously.

There is no river and there are actual _people_ outside. He blinks and realizes he hadn’t seen a single person he didn’t know until approximately a week ago, until the little girl spoke to him.

“I’ve been home a week,” he says.

“Yes,” John answers though it wasn’t phrased like a question, “Why?”

Sherlock turns back to him. “And I was gone for a month before that?”

“There about, _yes_ ,” John replies. “ _Why?_ ”

More than long enough to integrate a full delusion, but still not long enough to make it _seamless_. Most people can’t read in dreams, especially not drug induced ones, and Sherlock can’t recall _once_ looking at a clock. Of all the aspects of the delusion he experienced, his captor couldn’t properly fabricate literacy and the exactness of time that would exist in real life. If they’d found him later, she might’ve been able to eventually _induce_ that, to convince him that the symbols he was seeing were actually words, that time was truly meaningless. He might not have been able to tell the difference between this world and that one, he might’ve… tried something _foolish_ thinking it would just reset. He might’ve— _you’ll just grow bored and break them_.

He closes his eyes and strokes Rosie’s arm when she gurgles at him, skin prickling at the very idea that he could’ve been a danger to any of this.

“Sherlock?” John says, reading his discomfort.

“I’m thinking,” Sherlock mumbles, but everything is a mess. He was gone for weeks, she _had_ him, she _had_ what she wanted, but she set him free? That’s what it was, wasn’t it? He doesn’t think it’s conceit that makes him believe she couldn’t have given up on him – no, that doesn’t make sense. This plan was too well thought out and executed to be given up on so easily, he couldn’t have been rescued without her _letting_ him be. He squints at John. “How did you find me so quickly?”

“ _Quick_ —? Sherlock, a month is not—” John stops himself before he can get worked up, “Your shoes.”

Sherlock turns to squint at him, “My _what?_ ”

“I bugged your shoes,” Mary says with a smug smile that doesn’t quite cover the concern in her eyes. “They were in a dead zone for quite a while until someone took them out to burn them. We came straight away.”

Sherlock looks at her, his awe of and love for her twisting in his chest. “My girl…”

“Sherlock,” John says and he has suspicion in his face. “What do you mean ‘this is real’?”

Really, what does he even say to that? He hadn’t once, in all that time, thought about what he would say if and when he got out. It’s embarrassing, that Sherlock’s mind so easily created and submitted itself to such a _sentimental_ dream. He is not some touch starved _infant_ , he does not _need_ any more touching, anymore feeling _._

So why is it that the mere thought of John and Mary never kissing him again has set his hands to shaking?

 “You said the drug was meant to make you susceptible to suggestion,” Mary says slowly when Sherlock just stares at John without answering.

“Yes,” he agrees truthfully, because her question is easier that her husband’s— _her_ husband’s, Sherlock reminds himself viciously. John is hers and they are each other’s; Sherlock is tangential, they don’t owe him anything more, they don’t owe him at all.

“Was that a lie?” Mary asks.

A beat of silence passes between them before Sherlock walks over and places Rosie in Mary’s arms. He tries not to let the picture the two of them make – beautiful, _loved_ , and looking up at him longingly – affect him. He means to answer her, but his silence is answer enough. He looks away.

“The doctor said nobody would remember after what you went through,” John says quietly, “But you’re never ordinary, are you? Christ, I should’ve known better. I should’ve _asked_ you.”

 “You’re going to be late for work,” Sherlock deflects and tries to move past him, “We don’t need to talk about—” He flinches back when John gets in his way, both of them appearing shocked by the motion.

John takes a confused step back. “Are you scared of me?” he asks annoyingly gently.

“Don’t be _stupid,_ ” Sherlock snaps.

“No, really, is that what they did?” John asks, “We all assumed it was the wife, Ms. Fischer, but it was bigger than that, right?”

“Mrs. Fischer is a vile but insignificant part of a human trafficking ring,” Sherlock answers shortly, “a part that is not interested in anyone like _me._ ”

“Then who took you off her stoop?” Mary asks patiently, “You’re sprinting, Sherlock, slow it down for us joggers.”

Sherlock starts to reiterate that John needs to leave, but he’s already dropped his jacket and folded his arms, watching him intently. It’s childish, the joy he gets that John has chosen him over—well, filing overdue paperwork, he doesn’t see patients on Sundays anyway, but still – his job. Sherlock’s mind has clearly set itself on betraying him in asinine pursuits of sentimentality.

“Someone who clearly knew me, a woman,” Sherlock turns to start pacing. “She said you’d made me _unwell_. She wanted me to remember something, something personal to the two of us that predates your knowing me.”

“Something you’ve deleted,” John guesses.

Sherlock runs his hands through his hair as his mind echoes, clenching his eyes shut. The boy and the dog are calling for his attention again. He doesn’t understand, he’s a _genius_ , why can’t he understand? “We had to have been children…”

“Why?” John asks.

“I saw myself, briefly, I couldn’t have been more than seven,” Sherlock answers frustrated. He can see the answer, forming itself just out of reach and it’s _infuriating_ him as much as it’s terrifying him, his mind buzzing and heart twisted in his chest. “And just before you rescued me, she appeared to me as a little girl. A guise that seemed more naturally chosen than constructed to be manipulative, even given the circumstances.”

“What could you have done that young to so upset—?” John cuts himself off when Sherlock gives him a look. “Right. Boy geniuses, the Holmes kids. So did you plot a world takeover? Plan an assassination, maybe?”

“Well, he forgot her,” Mary offers, “I’d be plenty upset, too.”

“I’d never forget you,” Sherlock mumbles absently, then rubs his temples and rushes on before anyone can comment on that. “I don’t forget anything that thoroughly without _intending_ to, why would I want to forget a child?”

“Are you sure _you_ were a child as well?” John asks and Sherlock turns to see him wiping a hand over his mouth— _agitated?_

Sherlock determines why almost as soon as he sees it; John’s come to the same conclusion he had when he first saw Her. It’s _stupid_ , the flash of guilt he feels, there’s no possible way she’s _his_ , not outside of that dream anyway. But the tension he sees in John makes his hair stand on end in the worst way.

“We both were,” Sherlock answers too quickly to sound like he was implying John’s stupidity with his tone. “I just told you that, am I still going to fast?” he tags on for effect.

John doesn’t rise to the bait. “But the little girl,” he presses, “what did she look like?”

Sherlock waves him off without even looking. “It doesn’t matter what she looked—”

“How couldn’t it?” Mary asks.

“Because it was fabricated!” Sherlock snaps, “I was in a continual state of delirium the entire time I was captive, I wasn’t even aware of the passage of time. What she looked like was a product of _multiple_ hallucinogens!”

“Yes, but she was probably still based on someone in reality, right?” Mary says, “They say in dreams we don’t create new faces, just reuse ones we’ve seen before.”

“Are you an _astrologer_ now?” Sherlock asks incredulously. His heart is pounding in his chest and he feels like something here is about to break, he _really_ wishes John hadn’t flushed his good pills.

“It’s not astrology, it’s science, Sherlock,” Mary persists, “A soft one, but still a science.”

“That holds no _bearing_ on this world, the real world!”

“Yes, it does,” John says in that annoyingly certain, won’t-be-letting-it-go voice that sets Sherlock’s teeth on edge, “because for some reason it’s got you turned inside out.”

“Boys…” Mary warns.

“Being kidnapped by someone who kept me for over a month without me being so much as able to _move_ has got me turned inside out,” Sherlock counters, “I was hardly in control of my own mind for a month _._ I was gone for a _month,_ John!”

“I damn well know it, I was sat here waiting for you to come back, same as always!” John counters sharply and Sherlock blinks and he’s in his face, “We’re trying to help figure out who had you _bound_ and _drugged_ for weeks where we couldn’t help and you won’t even tell us what she _looked_ —?”

“She looked like me!!” Sherlock shouts, _purges_ the information from his body though it gives him no relief. Especially not when Rosie breaks into tears.

“Oh sweetie, hush now, Papa and Uncle Sherly are going to _shut up or so help me Christ,_ ” Mary sings soothingly with a smile, standing and bouncing Rosie as she walks to the door. “If it comes to blows, I’ll _hm hmm hm_ them both myself, yes I will!”

John and Sherlock stay perfectly still as she descends the stairs, John’s face shifting from apologetic to carefully blank.

“Is that what you want to hear?” Sherlock barks lowly, ashamed and sick and _annoyed_ at feeling that way. “She had _my_ hair, _my_ eyes, and my same calculated disinterest towards _emotions_.” He turns away, furious at himself, at the image of a little girl he couldn’t help but smile at stuck behind his eyes. “The little girl was just another part of the _ridiculous_ life my subconscious dreamt up, a part of a fantasy.”

John is silent until the sound of Mary’s footsteps returning fills the space between them. “Is it possible?” he asks mildly, like Sherlock can’t tell he’s consciously keeping his hands from fisting at his sides.

Sherlock sighs though it comes out more like a hiss, “John, _honestly._ ”

“ _No!_ Sherlock, no,” John catches his voice before it can raise to a shout again at Mary’s sharp look. “Is it possible she’s real?” he asks sternly, “You assumed she was meant to be your daughter, right?”

“No,” Mary says before Sherlock can reply and when he turns to see her looking at him tenderly, with something almost like pity, his throat seizes up. “He assumed she was meant to be _our_ daughter.”

“ _What?_ ” John says, gaze flickering between them, “‘ _Our’,_ who?”

“He said he was hallucinating,” Mary leans against the armchair and Sherlock watches in silence as she turns to him. “You didn’t know _this_ was real because it was so close to what you’d been seeing in the tank, but it was still wrong. When John went to leave, right? He did it wrong.”

Sherlock feels his face go hot with shame, something he is unused to feeling an unsure how to stop, not when John turns to him in confusion. “Sorry, I don’t follow…” he says and Sherlock stares Mary down like she has a gun, like more than just her words were loaded.

“You say she wants you to remember something, but you haven’t,” Mary’s eyes are bordering the dark place of a former-operative – analyzing him coldly – though her tone is still mild, _loving_ almost. “If it was important enough to keep you for a month, to play this mind game with you, it doesn’t really hold that she’d just give up.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Sherlock agrees. The Girl wants _him_ and she _had_ him; it was unlikely his rescue was a slipup. She _let_ him go, but why?

“You think she’ll come back for him?” John asks, not quite keeping up, but allowing himself to be dragged.

“No,” Mary says again, “She wants him to come to her. She let him go because she thinks he will, or rather,” her face quirks towards a frown, “she programmed something she thought would push him to.”

_You’ll just grow bored and break them._

The phantom feeling of a nondescript weapon in Sherlock’s palm sets his hair on end and he takes a staggering step back, hands spread wide at his sides. “I _never_ would’ve…” he blurts, but breaks off, can’t make himself say it, any of it, because it’s all _wrong, wrong, wrong._ He may not be a _good_ friend, but he is _a_ friend, he would never… He pauses that thought, mind twisting off in another direction.

_She_ believed he would grow “bored” enough of his _real_ life to actually kill his Watsons? That doesn’t make sense, does it? There’s never any point in his life that he can recall – and he certainly _would_ recall – that he’s ever been the kind of person who would intentionally hurt his friends.

Then again, it’s been a very long time since he’s ever called anyone a friend, hasn’t it? He doesn’t think he’s ever had a friend like John or Mary, never trusted, never – he cringes and admits to himself – never _loved_ anyone the way he does them. He can’t lose them, not now, they mean too much. He wouldn’t even be the same person after if something were to happen to them, if he _caused_ something to happen to them. He can safely – _horrifyingly_ – say he doesn’t know what he would do with himself.

“Sherlock?” John says and Sherlock looks over to realize his own breathing has gone ragged, Mary and John watching him with concern. “What is it she was trying to do?”

“She wanted to break…” Sherlock shakes his head, “No, no, she wouldn’t see it as breaking, she wanted to _cure_ me of…” He looks away, this time more in thought than shame, though. Tries to let the need for answers take him away from the feelings wrapped tight in his stomach. “Of my _affection_ for you.”

“How?” Mary asks neutrally, though John goes flush and alarmed at the same time.

Sherlock motions around. “The instigated change of dynamic was rocky, but the effect _impossibly_ perfect, I…” he swallows, nodding at the two of them, “I dreamt we were a _family_ , a proper one.” He’s feeling a bit cross now, the idea that someone could pull that desire out of his psyche, _force_ him into this place. “She played on that, let me have everything I… She meant to convince me I’d grow bored of ‘playing house’ with you. That people like me—people like _she and I_ would only ever be satisfied with each other.”

“She wants you for herself,” John says.

Sherlock nods. “She asked me to free myself for her, free the both of us.”

“By getting rid of us?” Mary asks incredulously, “She believes you could do that?”

“I believe,” Sherlock says, pleased by her trust in him, “ _she_ would’ve been able to, had she been… accosted by my particular feelings. She didn’t go after you because that would’ve made us enemies, she wanted _me_ to be the one to do it.”

“But it didn’t _work_ ,” John says.

“Of course not,” Sherlock glances at him, “Even if it had, I can’t see what good to her I would be in prison.” He shakes his head, “Even if I covered all my tracks, the death of my best friend’s entire family, with whom I practically cohabitate would irrevocably be deemed my fault. I wouldn’t be able to get far, not for long, anyway.”

“Unless that’s what she wants,” John says and Sherlock squints at him. “Come on, you honestly think Mycroft would let you be shipped off to rot anywhere he wasn’t controlling?” He laughs, shaking his head, “It wouldn’t matter what you did, he’d have you locked up somewhere private, his vest pocket if he could pull it off. That might be—”

“Where she is,” Sherlock finishes and is once again blindsided by John’s stroke of genius. John was never a fool, but Sherlock sometimes let his own intelligence blind him to this. He turns to him, mind whirling. “She’s someone close to him.”

“A little girl with your eyes and hair and the Holmes intellect,” Mary says slowly, “who wants you to do away with the family that stole you and run off into Mycroft’s pocket with her.” Her brows lift slightly, “That’s a very narrow window.”

It _is,_ it boils down to _one_ answer that Sherlock doesn’t see as _true,_ but he knows somewhere— _everywhere_ within himself that it’s _right_. His intellect and his instinct, aligned with the same conclusion.

“ _Christ_ , there’s _three_ of you,” John says, rubbing his forehead, “and the missing one is homicidal.”

Sherlock isn’t even seeing the room anymore, trying to make sense of the little girl he met, trying to fit her into his memories. “Why would I have deleted my _sister_?”

“Your mind may not remember, but your body does,” Mary says and it takes him a moment to focus long enough to understand what she means. “You’re shaking, you’ve gone all pale. You’re _terrified_ of her.”

Suddenly, the only thing he was ever deeply, entirely terrified of as a child flings itself to the forefront of his mind. “Eurus,” he breathes and suddenly hears the dog and the boy and the little girl singing a song that made him want to vomit, _Poor Drowned Redbeard._ A boy and a dog, a boy _or_ a dog? Sherlock’s eyes are stinging. “ _Eurus!_ ”

“Hey, Sherlock, hey now,” John says getting closer to him, “What’s Eurus?”

Sherlock grips at his hair, frantically sorting through images in his own mind, unable to remember which are _true_. God _damn him_ , he can’t recover the files correctly, the whole bloody room in his mind palace is wrong, warped, _burning_. He is aware, outwardly, of his own fear to even stand in this doorway. “The one thing Mycroft ever _taught_ me to be afraid of,” he hisses, “Eurus, the east wind.”

“You’d deleted her,” Mary stands then, closer, too. “Why would he want you to be afraid of someone you couldn’t remember?”

 “I think she killed someone,” Sherlock’s words stagger out of his mouth before he can catch them, and he feels frighteningly young, feels the failure of a riddle he never solved, feels guilt fall heavy on his back. “John, _John_ , I think she killed my best friend!”

John’s gone pale, but his face is still firm as he takes him by the arm. “Sherlock, that’s—”

“She’ll not have you, any of you!” Sherlock says and he can feel himself getting worked into mania, his heart and his mind racing each other into hysterics. He itches to stop this, to find Eurus, to find _Redbeard_ , to close his arms around the Watsons and never let them _out of his sight_. “I never got bored, I loved it, I loved every minute of being in love with you, being your family,” he babbles, “I don’t care if it was just a fantasy, _this_ , you, and how I feel _is_ reality!! _She’s not taking my family from me!!_ ”

“Shh, ok,” Mary says and her hand rubbing down his spine is familiar for all the ways it is not. “We’re right here, love—” Sherlock winces “—nobody’s gotten us. If you’re the only threat to us, we’re as safe as can be.”

Sherlock still feels like he’s going to shake out of his skin, but her words cut through the haze of his panic. However, when he looks up to see the pinched look on John’s face he steps back, stricken.

“I’m…” he stumbles, trying to make sense of his own _dribble_ —god, he _was_ the stupid Holmes’ child, wasn’t he? The overly emotional _baby._ “Sorry, that was… a bit not good, wasn’t it? I didn’t mean to…” He shakes himself and wipes his cheeks, moving towards the door, “I need to end this, this has to stop. I _do_ understand what this is, what our reality is. I-I’m back, I’m present, I know you don’t actually—”

“Oh God, Sherlock, _Christ,_ ” John cuts him off, “ _Stop._ ”

Sherlock resists when John snags him by the sleeve before he can leave, but he freezes when he takes his face in his hands. He can see Mary’s tiny smirk, but is too focused on the intense way John is looking at him. “I’m not angry, you loon, not in the slightest,” John says, “You haven’t said a thing wrong.”

“ _Haven’t I?_ ” Sherlock says. He knows John would not mock him, but he feels like he’s being let down easy; he hates it, he doesn’t want this easy. You have to feel your pain.

“No,” John says, searching his face with awed, sad eyes. “No, Sherlock, you… you really don’t know I love you?”

Sherlock startles. “I… Yes,” he offers, “You said I was your best friend.”

“The best friend he’s been pining over for years, love,” Mary calls from over John shoulder and Sherlock looks up as she slides up beside them, laughter in her eyes. “Must be contagious or something.”

Glancing between them, he shakes his head in denial. “I don’t under…”

“Yes, you do. We love you, you dolt,” Mary says, “Your mind didn’t fabricate that part.”

“Sherlock,” John’s says and his hand on his face is gentle as it pulls him forward, bends Sherlock until his face is pressed into John’s shoulder. “You’re my family, too. That’s _my_ reality, the only real version of my life.” It’s impossible for John not to notice him shudder when his arms close around his back, “You’re ours, love. That’s not fake.”

“The other parts don’t have to be either,” Mary adds with a comforting smile when John lets him up, brushing his hair back from his face when he blushes at her. “What? You’re not always a hard read.”

Sherlock looks at her with the sort of hopeful and startled fluttering in his chest. The dream world had given him perfect, but this felt like the beginning of something better, something real. He feels he should be worried he’ll long for the simplicity of the dream, but instead it feels… well, as though he’s been robbed of an entire month of this, of _Them_. He swallows before he admits, “I feel like I’ve _missed_ you.”

“We’ve certainly missed you,” John says, then his hand is warm on Sherlock’s neck, face quirking hesitantly. “May I kiss you, Sherlock? Would that be ok?”

Sherlock’s heart hurts in his chest, fit to explode with want. “ _Please._ ”

It’s a kiss, a sensation Sherlock has felt before with no particular interest or displeasure. He knows what a kiss feels like, but – even in the dream world – he is unused to it feeling like he’s drawing a full breath for the first time in ages. John is perfectly chaste with him and Sherlock is _shaking._ When Mary’s hand trails up his arm, he turns to her. Her lips are sweet against his, but then she’s pressing their foreheads together, speaking softly.

“You aren’t her, Sherlock. Whatever game she’s started, you don’t have to play it _her_ way,” she says. “You don’t have to play alone, don’t have to play _at all,_ even.”

Sherlock shuts his eyes as he breathes against her lips, “But I have to _know_.” He holds fast to John’s hand where it’s slid down into his. “I want…” there are too many ways to finish that sentence, “John, I _want._ ”

“I know,” John says soothingly.

“There’s so much I don’t—”

“I know,” he says again and when he steps back, Sherlock’s mind clears a little. “Do you have to go alone?”

Sherlock thinks for a moment – thinks of where someone like him, who’d never had a Watson to save her would be held, thinks of what he’ll have to say to Mycroft, to _her_ – then nods. “This time, I believe so, yes.” He turns when Mary’s fingers stroke lightly behind his ear.

“Ok, then,” she says, with a tender smile that this time encompasses her entire face. She kisses his temple and her eyes sparkle when he smiles boyishly back at her. “When you’re done, come back to us.”

“Always back to us,” John agrees.

“Always,” Sherlock repeats, then feels steady enough to let the whirlwind of his mind take him over, whisking through the room to grab his phone and coat. It almost pains him to stop in the doorway, but he does, looking up at them from where he’s begun punching in Mycroft’s number. “I’ll be back.”

John nods shortly in the same moment Mary says, “You bloody better.”

Mycroft greets him as blandly as he normally does until Sherlock interrupts him. “Eurus,” he says, moving down the street swiftly. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but the heavy, speechless silence at the end of the line tells him it will be only minutes until he gets into a dark car that will take him somewhere he’s never been, Zephyrus bending the compass to meet his inverse. “I believe we need to have a _‘family meeting’_.”

It is a long day that starts with an unkind discussion.

They don’t shout, which is somehow worse, makes the pallor in Mycroft’s face nowhere near as satisfying as Sherlock wants it to be. The deflections he receives are enraging, but Sherlock does not let himself sway. He presses on until he’s got his five strongest – of which there are only seven – blackmail chips laid out before him and Mycroft looks fit to be tied. He recounts in savage whispers what she wanted him to do, does not let Mycroft deny the possibility to save his own pride because this _happened under his watch._

Mycroft is even less kind, however, and eventually tells him the truth, “ _The man you are today is your memory of Eurus._ ”

 A death, a fire, a mass overhauling of his younger brother’s memory that neither he nor his parents saw reason to dispute. A primordial fear that Mycroft thought merciful to link to a fairy tale so it seemed far away and false – _the East Wind is coming._

As Mycroft speaks, the dog and the boy reconcile themselves in Sherlock’s mind, a little pirate, his first mate, lost at sea. He aches for Victor, but his rage is dry and cold in front of his brother. He does not cry because John is not there to wipe his face and Mary is not there to rub his back; he’s had enough tears for one day, he’s had enough tears for this year, he is not a _child._ There is nothing to be gained by coddling himself now, his trauma has already changed too much about him, taken too much. He has to face his fear – his rage, his grief, his _love_ – like an adult. He has to face the things his sister never had and wants to save him from. They both have to face the knowledge he cannot be saved from these.

He understands it’s standing in a mouse trap when he enters the facility, even with Mycroft leading, even with the additional, previously unattached guard detail. Mycroft may have overestimated his own control, but Sherlock has no illusions.  He knows Eurus has only ever been caged by her desire to be freed by _him_. The facility was a black hole, yes, but Eurus was not _light_ , she was impossible, uncontainable. Completely, uncomprehendingly alone.

He understands, what this is, what she wants him to be. He wishes he could forgive her for the ways she tried to save herself, wishes he could _save her_ from it – he doesn’t want to blame her, but he doesn’t want to let go of anything she’s asking him to, not even for her.

He had to slog his way through loneliness and drugs and violence and torture and all sorts of trouble that lead back to _drugs_ before he got to a place where he wanted to _stay_. He wants 221B and Mrs. Hudson pattering around down stairs and Lestrade bringing him his cases, he wants John and Mary Watson and their humor and grit and patience and love for him, he wants to hold his goddaughter and explain _the whole world_ to her until she sleeps. He loves the rush and violence of solving cases, yes, loves an answer that makes him work for it, but that’s not all, for once in his life, _that is not all._ He can’t break himself to give her the pieces she’s missing, he can’t be _her_.

Eurus looks ghostly, _unreal_ , where she stands in the center of her cell. She’s dressed in all white, with her hair hanging in a dark sheet down her back as she plays her violin. He steps closer and the playing gets erratic, a warning he ignores. He toes the line, his heart somewhere in his throat, “Eurus.”

The trilling of the violin abruptly stops and she turns to him, lowering the bow. “Sherlock,” she says in a small, light voice. She sounds disapproving.

When he just looks at her, she sets the violin – _a Stradivarius, he notes_ – down and steps up to the glass barrier, eyes searching. He lets himself be searched, though it makes his skin crawl. Her face keeps shifting, between the girl in the dream and the real girl in the past and the woman before him. He swallows, but does not back down, he can’t – it feels like everything he cares about is standing behind him. Things and people she is not allowed to touch. He lets her see all this, knows she can read it all on his face, the set of his shoulders, John’s aftershave and Mary’s chap stick on his temple.

“No,” she says plaintively, her face oscillating between desperation and rage. “No, _no, no_ —!!”

Sherlock realizes, with less than a half second to spare, that the line marking three feet back from the glass was a part of the trap. There was no glass between them, there wasn’t anything between them. She dives for his throat and he catches her, having to work surprisingly hard to keep hold as they crash to the ground. “Eurus!”

“You have to, Sherlock!!” she shrieks in his face. “I put that dog down for you when we were children, but you have to do it for yourself now, you _have_ to under—!”

“I understand,” Sherlock cuts in. “You’ve been so lonely, haven’t you? Up there all alone.” Alarms are going off now and Sherlock has to trust Mycroft’s team is enough to handle whatever has erupted outside, because Eurus has him for now. Just for now, she’s got him. “I know what you wanted, Eurus, but it wouldn’t’ve worked. I don’t know what the loss of the Watsons would do to me, but it would not turn me into you. Just like… just like losing Victor didn’t turn me into you.”

“You have to _do_ it to understand,” Eurus says, then in desperation adds, “How can you even know this is _real_ until your crutches are gone? How can you know if _you’re_ real?”

Sherlock feels no doubt, no fear at her words. He holds her wrists and regards her with something like remorse. She gave him the dream of his family with the Watsons out of desperation and he understands, with a wrenched heart, that her dream would consist only of him and her.

“The man I am right now is as real as I could ever be,” he says gently, “You may have changed me, but I can’t _be_ you. _That_ is not reality. I can’t be made into who you’re asking,” he admits and instantly her face goes blank, completely void of any expression. He watches her slide away into somewhere he can’t even _imagine,_ pulls her against his chest as she does. “I wish I could reach you, Eurus, _sister mine_ ,” he says honestly.

But this here, her slumped docilely in his arms, is as close as he can get.

And so he stays there until his shoulder aches and the alarm stops blaring, until the door behind him slides open and Mycroft, gratifyingly disheveled, rushes in. He knows exactly how long this process takes – the numbers comforting him – but ultimately, does not linger on it. He would stay longer for her, _this_ he can do for her.

“We’ll play a duet,” Sherlock says softly when they are drawn away from each other, when she turns slowly back into her cell without looking at him. She does not respond with words, but when she picks up her violin, he understands the song she begins to play, feels it in his chest. He nods. He will never repeat its message, except to give the location of a well in a far off forest, to let his first mate finally rest.

When they get closer to shore, two messages ping as his phone reenters the service zone.

_At home. Let yourself in. **MW.**_

_Family, Sherlock. **JW.**_

The time it takes him to get back to their apartment starts with somewhat of an anxious blur. He knows this is reality, he knows that, _he knows it_ , but the unimportance of the faces on the street as they drive past them makes him edgy. He looks out the window and reads the signs as quickly as they come and go, pays attention to the people on the streets when he can make out their faces. He reads the messages again.

_At home. Let yourself in. **MW.**_

_Family, Sherlock. **JW.**_

When he gets to the Watson’s apartment, it takes him a moment to remember he even has a key with which to let himself in. He stops in front of the nursery, only to confirm it is still quiet, save for the tinkling of a mobile, then stops in front of the master bedroom. He has never actually been inside, though he feels like he knows what he will see – he’s good at what he does for a reason. He’s mentally trying to ready himself, running through multiple scenarios as to what could happen after he knocks – or should he knock? Mary said to let himself in, but did she mean the _bedroom_ or just the apart—

“ _Don’t stand outside the door like a spook, come in,_ ” John’s voice calls softly through the door causing him to tense before sighing. Caught, he opens the door.

John is sitting up against the headboard, looking him over thoroughly as Mary pushes up from where she was face down in her pillow. They’re domestic and sleep ruffled and Sherlock’s whole body sags with relief when he sees them, shoulders slumping and face falling.

“Are you alright?” she asks.

“I’m—yes, I…” Sherlock thinks about the ache in his chest, hears Eurus’ song. “No,” he says, but when Mary starts to rise, he waves his hands. “I just want to sleep.”

 “Could you?” John asks carefully.

Sherlock considers it for a moment. “I believe so.”

“Then lose the trousers and come lay down,” Mary says with a yawn.

Sherlock hesitates, not exactly shy, but very uncertain. “This is… alright?”

When he glances at John, he’s just met with a small smile and equally small shrug. “Sure, love,” he says and Sherlock’s face heats pleasantly. He slides out of his coat.

He knows John needs to be on the outside, but he doubts Mary cares one way or another, it’s just a matter of whether or not he’ll _actually_ sleep and whether or not it’s too forward to get between… Sherlock stops himself.

It’s been a long bloody day.

He folds into the space between them before he can think himself out of it, enjoys the sensations of this being _real_ , the calming effect it has on his mind. Time does not twist or bend or leap, the walls are the right height and everything is the right color. He can smell their laundry detergent and Mary’s shampoo, when she wiggles towards him, laughing sleepily. Sherlock feels John hesitate before sliding down under the blankets and putting an arm over Sherlock’s side, a question.

Sherlock answers by laying his arm over John’s, anchoring him in place, relaxing the both of them.

He knows that eventually they’ll get too warm, and they’ll have to use the bathroom, and someone’s arm will fall asleep, and Rosie will cry, and the sun will rise and so will they – they’ll have to wake up and face the world. He knows that, and somehow, that makes this mean more. The reality of waking, of leaving dreams behind and knowing there is still somewhere warm and loving to come back and rest in, a _family_ to catch him when he lands, a family that trusts _him_ to catch them.

Something built on a love just as real as John’s heart beat against Sherlock’s back and Mary’s breath tickling his chin.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> This is just a small part of a big effort that helped out a lot of good causes, but I want to thank destinationtoast for giving me the chance to contribute! Check out the other FTH pieces in the collection and keep your eye out for the next go ‘round!
> 
> Story Notes:  
> The thing about not being able to read in dreams is true for most people, actually! Most of the words you see in dreams, if you see any, are nonsense that your dream just supplies meaning to. So if that’s ever a thing you’re frightened of, whether or not reality is real, try to read something. If you can, you’re in the real world!
> 
> Some liberties were taken with Greek mythology. Of the major wind gods, “Eurus” is the East Wind and “Zephyrus” represents the West Wind. There are a bunch of lesser winds, too, which someone smarter than me should totally incorporate into a fic of Holmes’ and Co.


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